Read for Pleasure: How HarperCollins India Is Rebuilding Joy-First CX

What happens when a brand stops optimizing clicks—and starts designing joy?

Picture this:

A child scrolling endlessly on a phone.

An exhausted parent buying books with good intentions, not habits.

An employee surrounded by content, but starved of quiet meaning.

Now imagine a brand asking a radical CX question:

What if the best customer experience is not frictionless—but meaningful?

At HarperCollins Publishers India, that question has taken shape as Read for Pleasure—a year-long, nationwide campaign that reframes reading not as an academic task or productivity hack, but as a daily experience rooted in joy, curiosity, and emotional well-being.

This is not just a publishing initiative.

It is experience design across customers, communities, schools, employees, and partners.

To unpack the CX, EX, and culture strategy behind this movement, CXQuest.com speaks with Akriti Tyagi, Director – Marketing & Corporate Communications at HarperCollins Publishers India.

With over two decades in Indian publishing, Akriti has led some of the industry’s most culturally resonant campaigns. She operates at the intersection of brand trust, habit formation, emotional engagement, and long-term loyalty—making her perspective especially relevant as CX leaders search for depth beyond dashboards.

This conversation explores reading as a customer journey, pleasure as a design principle, and culture as a scalable CX asset.

Recent Customer or Reader Experience

Q1. What recent customer or reader experience at HarperCollins surprised you most—and why?

AT: What surprised me most was how often readers told us they hadn’t “stopped loving books” – they had simply stopped giving themselves permission to read. In book clubs, school sessions, and even casual retail conversations, people spoke about reading as something they used to do, not something they still owned. That emotional distance was more striking than any metric. It reminded us that the biggest barrier today isn’t access or awareness – it’s intimidation, time guilt, and the idea that reading has to be “useful” to be justified.

Q2. When did HarperCollins first recognize that reading itself needed CX redesign, not just better marketing?

AT: We began to see it when we mapped the journey beyond discovery and purchase and realized the experience went silent after checkout. The relationship with the reader effectively ended at the till or the download. That was a blind spot. Reading is a lived experience, not a transactional one. Once we framed reading as a habit rather than a product, it became clear that what needed redesigning wasn’t our messaging – it was the emotional arc of what happens after a book enters someone’s life.

Q3. How does Read for Pleasure reframe the “customer journey” beyond purchase into daily habit formation?

AT: We treat the book as an invitation, not a destination. The journey now starts with a simple pledge – 30 minutes a day – and continues through community touchpoints: book clubs, schools, workplaces, families, and social storytelling. Instead of optimizing for “next purchase,” we optimize for “next reading moment.” The experience becomes cyclical: read, reflect, share, belong – and then return to reading again.

How to Choose a Core CX Anchor for a Campaign

Q4. Why was joy—not productivity or outcomes—chosen as the core CX anchor for this campaign?

AT: Because productivity already owns every other part of people’s lives. If reading enters that same mental space, it becomes another obligation. Joy disarms. It lowers the barrier to entry. When people read for pleasure, they stay longer, return more often, and bring others in with them. From a CX perspective, joy is what creates voluntary loyalty rather than forced engagement.

Q5. How do you design for inclusivity when your audience spans children, adults, schools, corporates, and underserved communities?

AT: We design around behaviors, not demographics. The behavior is simple: “How can reading fit into your life today?” That might look like a child being read to, an employee reading during a lunch break, or a community sharing books in a local space. The campaign language, visuals, and activities stay deliberately open-ended, so people can see themselves inside the experience rather than being spoken to as a category.

Q6. What emotional signals tell you that a reader feels welcomed rather than intimidated by books?

AT: The shift shows up in language. People stop asking, “What should I read?” and start saying, “This is what I’m reading.” Ownership replaces deference. When readers begin recommending books to each other instead of waiting for authority figures – critics, publishers, or influencers – you know the experience feels safe, personal, and welcoming.

Enhancing Trust and Belonging in the Brand Experience

Q7. How does encouraging reading in any language change trust and belonging in the brand experience?

AT: It tells people, “You don’t have to enter our world – we’re entering yours.” Language is identity. When we explicitly invite reading in any language, we move from being a publisher that speaks to readers to one that stands with them. That shift builds cultural trust and signals that belonging matters more than format, fluency, or market segment.

Q8. What role does employee experience play in delivering authentic reader experience at scale?

AT: Employees are our first readers. If they don’t feel permission to read for joy, it’s impossible to advocate for it authentically outside. Culture travels outward. When teams experience reading as something human and shared – not just professional – it changes how they speak about books, authors, and readers in every interaction.

Q9. How does the internal Read for Pleasure Hour influence culture, advocacy, and brand credibility externally?

AT: It removes performative marketing from the equation. We’re not asking the public to do something we don’t do ourselves. That alignment between internal behavior and external message is what gives the campaign credibility. Employees become organic advocates because the experience is real, not scripted.

How to Measure Joy as a Goal

Q10. In CX terms, how do you measure success when the goal is joy, not immediate conversion?

AT: We look for signals of continuity, not spikes. Are people returning to reading month after month? Are communities forming around shared reading moments? Are schools, workplaces, and clubs sustaining the habit without prompting? Qualitative indicators – stories, testimonials, repeat participation – matter as much as reach or impressions.

Q11. What trade-offs did you consciously make between scale, simplicity, and emotional depth?

AT:  We chose simplicity. A single, human promise – 30 minutes a day – travels further than a complex, emotionally layered framework. Emotional depth comes from what people do with that promise, not how we over-design it. The trade-off is less control over how the experience unfolds, but more authenticity in how it’s lived.

Q12. How do partnerships—with schools, bookstores, NGOs, and corporates—extend the experience ecosystem?

AT: They turn the campaign into an environment rather than a channel. Each partner becomes a new “reading space” – physical or emotional – where the habit can live. That’s how the experience scales without feeling centralized or branded at every touchpoint.

When Brands Step Into Cultural Habit-building

Q13. What risks exist when brands step into cultural habit-building rather than transactional engagement?

AT: The biggest risk is being perceived as performative. If the behavior doesn’t match the message, audiences see through it quickly. Habit-building requires patience, humility, and long-term commitment. You can’t treat it like a quarterly campaign – it has to feel like a belief system.

Q14. How should CX leaders think about designing “slow experiences” in a fast, AI-driven economy?

AT: Speed is a competitive advantage, but slowness is a differentiator. Slow experiences create memory, meaning, and emotional residue – the things algorithms can’t replicate. CX leaders should design for moments that people want to stay inside, not just pass through.

Q15. If you were advising a CX leader outside publishing, what’s one principle from Read for Pleasure they should borrow immediately?

AT: Design for what people become, not just what they consume. The strongest experiences don’t end with a transaction – they leave someone slightly changed. When you build for identity and habit instead of conversion alone, loyalty becomes a natural outcome rather than a KPI you have to chase.

A Powerful CX Truth

This conversation reveals a powerful CX truth:

The most enduring experiences are not optimized—they are felt.

HarperCollins India’s Read for Pleasure campaign demonstrates how brands can move from attention economics to meaning economics, from short-term engagement to lifelong habit-building.

Key CX insights from this interview include:

Joy is a scalable design principle, not a soft metric

Culture amplifies CX when employees live the experience

Inclusion builds trust faster than personalization alone

Habit-forming CX requires patience, not pressure

For CX leaders navigating AI, automation, and efficiency mandates, this campaign offers a counterbalance: design experiences people want to return to—without being nudged.

Explore more on CXQuest.com in our hubs on Culture-Led CX, Experience Design, and Human-Centered Strategy—and ask yourself:

What would your brand look like if pleasure, not friction removal, was the north star?

The post Read for Pleasure: How HarperCollins India Is Rebuilding Joy-First CX appeared first on CX Quest.